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A collective diatribe of tales and tribulations on maintaining a HOT spark in your gas engine ignition with low and high tension coils, ignitors, condensers, magnetos and magnet charging.

Upon restoring my first gas engine, the Witte, I quickly found out that engines don't start and run right unless the ignition is set up properly. Having had a lifetime of electronics experience, I set out to gain as much knowledge as possible about engine ignitions and what keeps them running. This page includes many observations about ignitions and gas engines as you will see when you click your way through the different sections in the table above. This is a rather lengthy "diatribe" and it's therefore split out into the different sections, some long, and some short. It all started with the ignitor, battery and coil, but the Wico high tension mag or the BUZZ COIL are the ones most seen on engines. Don't forget to look at the magnet charger in the Summary section and see other reader's comments in the email section. You may want to visit my Ideal lawnmower engine page for information about magneto tripping mechanisms.http://www.old-engine.com/magneto.htm